Yall gonna hate me.
ALLIANCE NEEDS A CIVIL WAR
First the setup:
The Alliance is ALREADY well-set for this sort of conflict. First off, Stormwind is without its king; he’s been spirited away by Sylvanas. This opens up a three-way power struggle between Matthias Shaw, who’s still acting as an agent of Stormwind (as Shaw thinks Stormwind should be, basically a souft coup by hte CIA), between Genn, who’s been positioning himself as vizier and possibly father-in-law to the king… and vs. Turayleon who’s been appointed regent and has this whole “VE MUZT KRUZADE FUR ZHE LIGHT” nonsnese going on.
While Genn has been jockying to position himself and his daughter in stormwind’s noble circles, he hasn’t done much for his own people, and any talk of retaking Gilneas has stalled out after BfA. I could see htem splitting between genn, Turaylon, and the Night elves.
Speaking of whim, the Night elves have kinda been shafted by the Alliance here, by their reckoning; the Night elves have born the vast brunt of the alliance’s wars with the horde over the last few years, from both Garrosh and Sylvanas… and they have not gained any benefit from this sacrifice. Now their tree is a smoking stump and this naive boy-king just sort of brushed that off. They’ve really got no tight bonds to the Alliance as it stands now, beyond their smaller alliances with the Gilneans and Draenei.
And the draenei are exhausted. The war against the Legion no doubt took a toll on them, and it’s not like there were tons of Draenei around after all. Velen’s entire thirty-thousand-year purpose has been fulfilled, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dude just wants to pop open a Nogginfogger and take a few centuries off for himself. You’ve got the Lightforged who are of course going to go gung-hi with Turaylon’s crusade, and try to drag the “main faction” Draenei along for hte ride, which I have to imagine… most won’t want to. and we know how the Lightforged respond when people turn them down.
Ironforge is in a pretty stable point, all things considered; even so i imagine that there’s still some soreness left after Varian essentially threatened a military occupation of Khaz Modan if the dwarves didn’t organize how he wanted them to organize. I can see them sticking with the Alliance in principle, but in reality just sort of hunkering down while the excrement splatters the rotary unit.
The Gnomes (and Mechagnomes) are sortign hteir own situation out, and can probably just be counted on to lean into whatever the dwarves are doing (sorry Gnomes, you’re the Tauren of the Alliance, the writers don’t remember you exist most of the time.)
Kul Tiras just had a civil war of its own, followed by the return of its fleet, the installation of a new grand Admiral, the destruction of its fleet, and the abduction of its grand admiral. There’s no possible way that Kul Tiras is not in absolute chaos as a result of the events of BfA and SL.
There’s canonically like ten void elves or something, so no offense but who cares. Maybe they’ll have some sort of freakout with the Light Crusade or whatever.
Anyway the premise isn’t like the Horde Civil Wars where it’s “the warchief is Wrongbad, we need to knock them over,” more a situation of each Alliance faction just being strained and splintered to its breaking point, seriously questioning the benefits of the Alliance (especially now that the horde is genuinely flat on its back) and coming into conflict over ideologies and territories
Why it needs to happen:
The Alliance is stagnant as hell. They’re written as always righteous, always perfect, wonderful, Lawful Good Human paladin types. No matter what happens, alliance always “pulls through because the power of FRIENDSHIP” or something. there’s very little moral grey in the Alliance and very nearly no shades darker than grey. A story of the alliance collapsing in on itself would not only add some much-needed drama to this absolute mary sue of a faction, but would also fit into the Warcraft story overall - the Alliance has collapsed in the past, after all!
With a civil war storyline, we can see some edge creep back into what has become the marshmallow faction. Characters can be complex again. the various internal factions can re-establish themselves instead of being “Soldiers of Stormwind, but with fur or pointy ears!”
But then what?:
This is a segue into a "reboot’ of how Warcraft handles its factions. Since Wrath, the Factions have been presented not as loosely aligned political friendships between disparate entities… but as solid, monolithic military orders where everyone is either a soldier or a merchant waiting in town. This is… Kinda lame, AND stale, after a decade of it over and over and over again.
After the Horde and Alliance both have their civil wars (and probably some skirmishes between them, again) we come into a world where the factions still exist, but have maybe splintered; Maybe we go to a WC3 four-faction model.
Whatever it is, write it so that neither faction can maintain the huge military buildupss they had back before legion / BFA / Alliance Civil War tore 'em all up. Everyone’s either tired or too young to remember. The player character is no longer a commander, a champion, a hero of their faction; they’re just an adventurer; perhaps the Maw Walker reborn into this new world and trying to make sense of things or whatever. Grade Warcraft back towards “Adventure / Exploration, with factions in the background” as Vanilla leaned towards.